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Many online marketing business models depend on adding articles and videos to your website – frequently and consistently.
A popular way to do this is adding RSS feeds to our sites – in essence, embedding content from other websites on our own sites. If you find a great blog, news site or YouTube channel in your niche, and they have an RSS feed, it is a relatively simple process to add all (or some) of that content to your own website.
Which fills your site up quickly, with content that is relevant to your site visitors! This is great, but … this practice worries some of us. Makes us feel squeamish – after all, we were taught not to be “copycats.”
And aren’t we violating some sort of copyright law?
Here’s our best advice on this issue, as it relates to the online business models we teach. There are quite a few myths.
Disclaimer: We are not attorneys and none of the advice herein should be construed as legal advice. If in doubt, consult your attorney. Or just don’t use anyone else’s content.
Google and Duplicate Content
Content that is used on multiple websites – duplicate content – is very common.
A study by Raven in 2015 found that 29% of pages have duplicate content.
https://raventools.com/blog/duplicate-content/Today that percentage is probably higher.
This isn’t necessarily bad or wrong.
- Product descriptions are often duplicated (ecommerce merchants use the descriptions the manufacturer gives them.)
- News stories are often duplicated.
- Press releases are often duplicated.
GOOGLE KNOWS THIS, and DOES NOT PENALIZE YOU FOR IT.
Really.
Unless they think you’re trying to be deceptive and using duplicate content to manipulate the search engines.
Not convinced? Listen to Google’s John Mueller, in this video from early 2021. Jump to about 28 minutes in. According to him, it’s just not a big deal.
https://youtu.be/MGAedxutADUHowever, if 1000 pages have duplicate content, Google DOES have to pick which one to rank highest. And that may not be the original writer.
Google looks at a lot of factors when crawling, indexing and ranking pages. Including the rest of the site’s content.
If they see your site as the best authority for that search term, they’re likely to rank you the highest, whether or not you wrote the “duplicated” content.
In short – original valuable content helps you. But duplicate content doesn’t hurt you.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism occurs when someone takes content, publishes on their own blog, and claims to be the author. Giving no credit at all. That is illegal. And yes, that person can be sued for it.
(If you want to search for plagiarized content, a good online tool to use is Copyscape. If you hire someone to write for you, by the way, be sure their work passes Copyscape analysis.)
How This Relates to Using RSS Feeds
One thing to remember is the BENEFIT to the original content source – IF you properly credit and link back to it.
If you share John’s article on your website, you are exposing a whole new audience to his expertise. And that backlink you give to his website helps him rank.
Many business owners love this practice and are perfectly fine with you using their content.
In fact, some companies deliberately show you their RSS feeds, so that it’s easy for you to find and use them. They may have requirements about how and where and in what format you use the content. If you cannot meet those requirements, don’t use the feed.
Also, understand that when you create a website or publish a YouTube channel, you are creating a feed, by default. If you absolutely do not want anyone else embedding your feed, you can disable the feed or restrict permissions.
How then, do you keep from getting into trouble with those writers or companies who don’t want you to use their content?
Consider the following strategies:
- Look for the publisher’s RSS or article usage guidelines before using their feed.
- Avoid importing content from any Feed that includes words like “Copyright” or “Restricted.”
If you can’t avoid importing it to begin with, search your posts for such terms and remove the posts.
There are other companies known to be aggressive about pursuing people who use their content – Getty (images) is one. The Associated Press is another. You’ll probably notice other terms as you import content (such as “Privacy Policy”.)
- Make sure you have a working Contact page on your site. If someone emails you and is upset that you used their article, don’t argue, just remove it.
And don’t publish content from that source anymore. - Always, always, credit the source. It doesn’t mean you have to display name, address and author info on every post. But at least include something like “View Original Source” at the end of the post on your site, and link back to the original post.
- If images tend to be a problem (for example, your feeds pull in a lot of posts with images from Getty), you can replace those with your own images.
Hope this has been helpful – if it makes you uncomfortable, just don’t use anyone else’s content at all. With these practical precautions, however, you should be just fine.
Suggested reading:
Sources for Website ContentCase Studies Expert | Google News Expert | Domain Expert | I Make Websites Work Harder
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